With the help of Lowe New York, XM Radio puts together a holiday card generator that's snazzier than your average. Shucking the white snow and holiday colours that one both expects and dismisses in holiday card campaigns, cards remain a sparing white-on-black with yellow flourishes. The nav is also stark and sparing.

We thought it was a neat concept - a few equal-opportunity greetings, a streamlined appearance, clever music, twitchy animals. We doff our caps to XM and Lowe for turning a stock campaign into something engaging without embarrassing themselves or indulging in overkill. That's surprisingly hard to do.

Some time ago, Danish comedians Wulffmorgenthaler created a comic strip that showed a frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. Earlier this year, DDB Berlin let loose a Volkswagen commercial that showed yes, frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. The usual pissing match has ensued. Some think DDB should apologize. See the strip here. Watch the ad here. What do you think?

It's a good thing Annika holds the Kenwood MP3 player up to the camera for a close up in this video otherwise we'd have suffered from the "my eyes are up here" syndrome throughout the entire thing in which she sings We Wish You A Merry Christmas in an enticingly sexy Swedish accent. Acknowledging her hard to miss cleavage, this rendition of "We" Wish You A Merry Christmas takes on entirely new meaning.

- As AdFreak points out, Chysler may want to revise the ad it has placed introducing the Time PErson of the Year. The ad's headline reads, "You might not be the Time Person of the Year." Oops.

- The controversial PayPerPost, a service that pays bloggers to write things about brands now requires those bloggers to make not of that on their blogs. Since the disclosure is not on a per post basis, this simply calls into question the merits of every single word ever mentioned on the blog.

- Esquire gives a nod to the 2003 Pop Montreal Festival poster with its current cover featuring George Clooney.

- Looks like Channel One, the company that pretends to educate kids but is all about delivering ads to them, is in trouble. Complaints have increased. Revenue is down. Regulation looms. A sale is possible.

- Greenpeace continued its efforts at calling the public's attention to Apple's apparent less-than-green approach to manufacturing its computers by shining green lights on the the company's 5th Avenue store in New York City last Thursday night.

That nasty sickness contextual advertising just can seem to shake has reared its ugly head once again. This time, those reading about how 250 people got sick after eating at an Indianapolis Olive Garden restaurant are now encouraged to experience their own sickness first hand compliments of a Free Dinner for Two at the national restaurant chain. Oh yes, Olive Garden wouldn't think of making you pay to get sick at one of their restaurants. They want you to get sick for free. How thoughtful.

This stunt aims to promote the product Go-Ped by showing drivers they ought to opt for more enviro-friendly vehicles. Yes, with a beartrap that says KILL THE BEAST in the middle.

We thought for a minute about ranting over campaigns that hawk their wares by making people feel shitty, inadequate or irresponsible, and then we realized that plenty of advertising does that, and we can't very well trash all advertising. Oh well. More Go-Ped stunts here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

It looks like the entire creative department over at JWT inhaled some sort of new drug before they went to work on the agency' holiday card. Five videos follow a teer (tear) around and...well...we have absolutely no idea. All you JWTers care to enlighten our limited minds on your goal with this little wet guy?

Oh wait. Oh wait. It's coming to us now. A tear is made of water and water "moves" around the world in the form of rain, snow, sleet, etc. Apparently, that ties to the campaign's "May the Holiday's Move You" tagline. Do we have it, JWT? Huh? Huh?

Vaseline releases a couple of ads lauding the magic of skin. There are a couple of versions; one esoteric and mystical, the other slightly more fast-paced with a beat made of babble. We'll let you guess which is which.

How or why is it that the USA versions of ads always seem crasser and dumber than UK ones or ads for Europe in general? - Contributed by Angela Natividad